CAIRO TO KISUMU shapes and are piled, one upon another, as if by the hands of a race of Titans. Here one stands high over those sur¬ rounding it, as though on a pedestal; there others are massed like fortifications; in another spot they rise in towers.

1 visited the Aswan quarries, the great stone yards from which the obelisks were taken, and from which came the mighty statues of Rameses and the massive blocks of the greatest of the Theban temples. The quarries to-day are much the same as they were when the Egyptians left them two or three thousand years ago. One can see the marks of their wedges on the rocks and the markings of the old stone-cutters are plain. In one place there is an obelisk half finished, lying on its side, just as the masons of the Pharaohs left it ages ago. When the granite was taken out for the Aswan Dam, the Italian workmen used many of the blocks that the ancient Egyptian mechanics had begun to cut; indeed, that great granite structure was made in partnership by two sets of mechanics born thousands of years apart.

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